Blaaaghhh

That's the sound of Katy right now. It's already midterms week! Except midterms will happily span across this week, next week, and possibly the next. And when I say happy, I mean with extreme cruelty and utter despicableness.
Anyways. Today I was in my writ class, half asleep because I was up late last night finishing my paper for the class, and someone said something that stuck out to me. We've been discussing architecture, buildings, and the conversations they have, personalities they hold, and feelings they give us. Basically, we've been interpreting buildings (as you can see from my last blog post, which is the last paper I wrote for the class). Braving the biting wind and chilly weather, we were asked today to spend twenty or so minutes outside, looking at various DU buildings, and figuring out their conversation with one another, how they complemented or contradicted one another in style, and if the architects had done a good job putting the various buildings (all from various time periods) together and if they were cohesive and balanced or not. Walking quickly and shaking our arms and legs a bit to ward off the cold, we spent a rushed ten minutesish quickly jotting down notes with our stiff, cold fingers and then dashed back into the warm classroom.
In our discussion of the buildings, someone compared them to a family. University Hall seems like the old, grandfatherly type, while the Hotel Restaurant Management Building seems more like the wayward grandson, with its sometimes overpowering mesh of styles. Someone else asked where Penrose Library sat in the family dynamic, as Penrose is a modern-style building and doesn't stylistically fit with the typical brick, stone, and more gothic or European styled buildings at DU. I said it was adopted, not meaning this in a negative way, simply that Penrose was still part of the family, but different in appearance. Someone else then jokingly responded, "That's why it's getting plastic surgery!" (Penrose is soon to undergo construction).
Somehow, this kinda made me sad. Who said we all have to look the same to go together? I am thinking of this in terms of an actual, human family. What dictates that they must all look alike? Who says it isn't okay, or is unattractive, abnormal, or in need of "fixing" for a family to have a child (or children) who are obviously adopted. It just kinda made me think.
I think way too much of the time there's too much focus put on the external. We all fall prey to this, makeup, clothes, hair, good looks, etc. More should be about the heart, the inside, the soul. Motion City Soundtrack sings, "What makes us so different? The insides work the same." True that! We're (generally) the same biologically. Our hearts and actions should dictate beauty, not our outward appearance.
And I think there's something wonderful about those families. It warms my heart and makes me smile to see families with adopted kids. I love family portraits with a variety of skin tones. There are many families at my church in St. Louis with more adopted kids than biological, and they're all sitting there together, black, white, asian, or hispanic, smiling and loving and living and being a family. Color doesn't matter. The heart does. When I "grow up" I'm having a multicultural and racial family. My children will be from China, the Ukraine, the United States, and wherever else God calls me. I'm excited, and I can't wait to send out my own colorful family portraits in the yearly(ish) Christmas cards.